


build me a city (and call it Jerusalem)

by ThatWeirdGuyInTheBushes



Series: The Blood of the Covenant [1]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Ambiguous/Open Ending, Angst with a Happy Ending, Canon Non-Binary Character, Fantastical Racism, Fluff and Angst, Found Family, Gen, Hurt/Comfort, Hybrids, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, POV Second Person, Queerplatonic Relationships, Rebellion, Revolution, hardcore found family, internalized furryphobia, trauma recovery but make it cottagecore 2: bigger badder bloodier
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-11-03
Updated: 2020-11-03
Packaged: 2021-03-08 19:48:11
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,640
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27362245
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatWeirdGuyInTheBushes/pseuds/ThatWeirdGuyInTheBushes
Summary: “Are you ready?” You ask, and it reverberates through the trees and down the city. It breaks windows and shatters teeth. Are you ready?They nod, and then you are walking away. Away from everything that has ever held you by the throat, away from things you will always remember. You wish, distantly, that someone would ask you if you’re ready. That someone would give you another out, a way to fix the world instead of leaving it behind. But no one bursts through the trees. You do not trip over a rebellion on your way out.There is no rebellion. There is no revolution. You and Cosmo are the only people in the world who would ever look out for each other. "You can’t save everyone," you hear your father saying. "Sometimes, you just have to settle for saving yourself."-A fox hybrid and his best friend walk into the woods, on their way to nowhere.
Series: The Blood of the Covenant [1]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2027773
Comments: 6
Kudos: 20





	build me a city (and call it Jerusalem)

**Author's Note:**

  * Inspired by [Where Did You Come From, Kit?](https://archiveofourown.org/works/26739124) by [KadeAK (zacixn)](https://archiveofourown.org/users/zacixn/pseuds/KadeAK). 



> the title is from "a litany of things crossed out" by Richard Siken.

_This is the fire._

You hold out your hand and Cosmo takes it. You run your finger over their thumb, careful not to scratch.

A spark ignites. 

“Are you ready?” You ask, and it reverberates through the trees and down the city. It breaks windows and shatters teeth. _Are you ready?_

They nod, and then you are walking away. Away from everything that has ever held you by the throat, away from things you will always remember. You wish, distantly, that someone would ask you if you’re ready. That someone would give you another out, a way to fix the world instead of leaving it behind. But no one bursts through the trees. You do not trip over a rebellion on your way out.

There is no rebellion. There is no revolution. You and Cosmo are the only people in the world who would ever look out for each other. _"You can’t save everyone,"_ you hear your father saying. _"S_ _ometimes, you just have to settle for saving yourself."_

You flatten your ears against your head and wonder when you started to smell smoke.

-

That night, you sleep on the forest floor, tangled like two kits with no mother. You fall asleep first.

_You dream of meeting them. You dream of your father, with fox ears he hid beneath hats and a heritage that he was ashamed of. You dream of your mother and your brothers, all wonderfully human and normal and perfect and then you. With ears that didn’t look like theirs and fangs and claws and worst of all a fire. A fire in your chest, a fire in your lungs. An all-consuming fire that would burn the city down if not doused._

_You dream of your stepfather, an ocean god._

_You dream of grease and wood fires and wonder which one you were._

_-_

There is a ghost town in the woods and it belongs to you now. It is you and your best friend (you and your sibling), in the ruins of an old world. This is all that is left, anymore. This is all that there is.

You claim the blacksmiths. Cosmo says they want the mayor's house, says the nicest bed is there, but every night you both go to bed on the same mattress, entangled, trying to seep into each other's skin. You’re both so starved for this, for this kind of love, that you don’t think a wall could separate you.

-

You fall asleep next to the dusty furnace, an old mattress beneath you and Cosmo's arm on top of your stomach, their horns against your shoulder.

_You dream of a little boy who bit his tongue with needle-sharp canines. Who kept quiet against the harassment and the screaming people and the shoves into the dirt._

_You dream of a boy who spent an hour each night praying to wake up normal. A boy who tried to rip off his own ears in the mirror. A boy who took a knife to his own tail and very nearly cut himself loose._

_A boy who sat through Hybrid Biology classes, who shrank beneath the stares, who cried in the bathroom and asked his mother if he was an animal. A boy who took her yes at face value and would have rather died than grab his legacy out of the darkness and simply wear it without feeling the need to say sorry._

_You dream of that boy and you wonder if you should have kept him._

_-_

You fix the gaps in the wall. Cosmo clears out the old, rotting crops and harvests their seeds to plant new ones. You wonder who lived here before, what ghost you can still feel wandering through the streets. You find the stockpiles of coal and shovel them into the furnaces, so you can keep warm in the October chill that’s started to roll over the hills.

A fox and a goat walk into a ruin. It sounds like the beginning to some twisted bad joke. You wonder what the punchline will be.

You wonder if the punchline is you.

-

The first person to wander into your walls is a wolf hybrid. She’s shivering and shaking off the snow and you don’t think that she’ll live very long. But you bring her in any way because that’s just who you are.

She curls up by the furnace and when she’s done shaking she tells you to call her Chiaki. She starts an irrigation system and fixes up your farm, and when she hugs you she says that this is giving _._

-

Chiaki joins your sleeping. She stays on one side of the mattress, curled up in a tight ball, but you figure she’s too used to staying with a pack to make it through the night alone.

_Tonight, you dream of a boy with claws. A boy who grew tired of defanging himself and started filing his teeth sharper. A boy who saw a history no one wanted him to remember and it tore it from their hands._

_A boy who grew tired of trying to rip himself open and find what was wrong and started to sew himself back up. A boy who realized that he was born the way he was for a reason. A boy who took the soaked logs he was left with and sobbed and screamed into the night until his tears turned to gasoline and his voice became a match._

_Tonight, you dream of the boy you’ve grown into and wonder if anyone else is proud._

_-_

After Chiaki comes more. More people, looking for shelter. 

Cinque arrives in the night, a mouse hybrid named Arilynn on his back. You’re wrapping her wounds before you even tell them your name. He’s a deer hybrid who had been stalking your camp for some time, waiting for the right moment to join, when he saw Arilynn take an arrow from some hunters. He’d made sure to lose them before coming here.

Cinque leaves for a few days and then comes back with bags full of hundreds of seeds. He places these in your hands and calls it his payment.

You find Shyanne well you’re out hunting. It’s summer and you’re stalking the forest, sniffing the air when you smell a human downwind of you.

You move forward and your heartaches in your throat, pounding and clawing for escape. You hear the girl before you see her.

“Chiaki!” You wonder how you didn’t hear her earlier. You wonder why she’s looking for your friend. She doesn’t look like a hunter, doesn’t smell like one, but you don’t know that she’s not. You don’t know what her game is.

You’re about to emerge and threaten her story out of her when she curses. Falls to the ground. Her head goes into her hands and you realize that she’s crying. You step out from behind the tree and sheathe your claws.

“Hey.”

She screams. Scrambles back. Then, she calms down and rubs at her eyes like she can scrub the tear marks away that fast.

You don’t need to threaten her for her story. She’s looking for her friend. Not to take Chiaki back home but to join her. Shyanne shakes your hand when you introduce yourself and hugs you when you take her back to the ghost town. She hugs Chiaki and teaches you campfire songs and she is drawing the town map you mentioned days ago when she calls what she does reparation.

Dark Star comes to you from the sky. He crashlands into the town square and starts making himself at home as soon as he can. He tells you to fix up the houses and then starts doing it himself. He tells you he is the fastest thing alive and helps you fix the house’s cooling systems before you even ask. He does not call this by a name. You think it might just be him.

You’re whittling a flag design into a log before you quite know what you’re doing.

-

The sleeping pile is bigger, now. There are two mattresses pushed together on the floor of the blacksmith’s. It’s a pile, a tangle of limbs, and sometimes it’s hard to tell where one person ends and the next one begins. But you and Cosmo are always together.

_Tonight, you dream of cities. Crumbling to dust under the weight of an empire. Tonight, you dream of children, running through forests as the whole world catches light. Tonight, you dream of blood, of skeletons. Of the candle-wick that is your people. Of a boot, of an ocean god, of a tyrant, of a campfire song. Tonight, you dream of flags._

_Tonight, you dream of revolution, and the fire in your blood begins to sing._

_-_

You build a wall around your world. Cosmo begins to sew a flag. Chiaki designs uniforms and Shyanne brings them to life.

You collect refugees from around the forest and on the outskirts of the empire. The houses are fixed and the walls keep you safe. You find yourself leading without meaning to, but there is comfort in being responsible.

You grow older. You grow better. You grow into this skin and these claws and this legacy in the way your father never did. You still have nightmares of the rising tide but now there are sandbags on the shore.

And one day a tyrant will come. And one day your walls may fall. And one day you might take your last stand in these woods as you face an army so much stronger than your own.

But you are ready. You are prepared. You are gasoline and canines, fox ears and revolution. You are a big brother and a leader and you will be ready for anyone who tries to take what you have made away from you.

_This is the fire._

**Author's Note:**

> comment to give me a raccoon for a pet


End file.
